Ever since Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt ran away from a crashing fish tank in 1996, the Mission: Impossible movie series has been all about the big stunts. The same is true of the latest film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which even goes so far as to hang its star outside of an airplane while it takes off. Those crazy practical stunts are refreshing in a summer that to this point has been mostly dominated by computer-aided science-fiction and fantasy movies. For what is really the first time in the series, the new movie picks up right where the last movie left off. In fact, this is the first movie in the franchise in which every member of Ethan Hunt’s core team was in at least one of the previous movies.

Director Walter Hill is famously quoted as saying that “most Hollywood boxing movies are metaphors” and it is no wonder. A boxer stands there and takes the punches his opponent throws at him and his success is determined by how well he can take these punches while continuing to fight back. We all face our challenges in life and our success is largely determined by how well we fight back against or through those challenges. Fortunately for the rest of us, those challenges usually don’t involve getting punched in the face. The new movie Southpaw follows the boxing-movie-as-metaphor template laid down by the many great boxing films that have come before it. It succeeds, for sure, but it follows that template a little too closely to truly break any new ground in the genre.

Avengers: Age of Ultron was more of the same for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the new chapter in the expanded universe franchise offers something new. A new superhero, Ant-Man, is introduced to the same world that is already occupied by heroes like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. His superpower—the ability to shrink down to the size of an insect—takes the franchise to new heights, quite literally. It’s as if Marvel crossed over with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and it is just as fun as that high-concept idea sounds.

Whether or not you were ready for more Terminator movies, you are getting them. The franchise rights revert back to its creator James Cameron in 2019 and current rights owner Paramount intends to release a full trilogy before that happens. The first is this summer’s Terminator Genisys, a movie that is both a sequel to the original films and a reboot of sorts. If you thought the Terminator timeline was confusing already, this movie’s time-traveling plot is really going to drive you crazy.

Throughout the entire decade of the 2000s, animation powerhouse Pixar was the king of original cinematic experiences. 2001’s Monsters Inc. was followed by Finding Nemo which was followed by The Incredibles, et cetera, et cetera. All the way through the release of Up in 2009, Pixar was creating high-quality and original new movies seemingly every year. In the current decade, however, Pixar has fallen victim to sequelitis, with 2012’s Brave being their only non-sequel release in the past five years. That changes in 2015, however, as the studio that a desk lamp built plans to release not just one, but two original films. The first is this summer’s comedy Inside Out.

The original Jurassic Park from 1993 is a legitimate classic, but its two sequels were underwhelming to say the least. They each had individual scenes that were exciting, but on a whole they came nowhere close to the awe-inspiring, majestic thrill ride that was the original. Enter Colin Trevorrow, a director whose only feature film to date, 2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed, as great as it was, doesn’t necessarily scream blockbuster potential. Whatever the producers saw in that movie, however, pays off big time as Jurassic World proves to be the Jurassic Park sequel that we always wanted.

The Entourage television show had a good eight-year run on HBO from 2004 through 2011, and now, four years later, the series has been adapted into a movie. Well, not really adapted. It’s more like show creator Doug Ellin and company got together and created a four-episode story arc, recruited as many of their famous friends as possible for cameos, and released those four episodes as one feature-length package in theaters. The result is a movie that might not do much in the way of attracting new viewers, but should give its fans an enjoyable way to reconnect with the characters.

In 2003, Disney struck it big when they turned one of their amusement park attractions, “Pirates of the Caribbean”, into a multi-million dollar movie franchise. If a movie based on a single attraction could be so successful, imagine what a movie based on an entire section of Disneyland might do! That might not have exactly been the thinking that led to the new movie Tomorrowland, but the movie is nevertheless the Disney Company’s newest attempt to turn part of their theme park into a movie franchise. The hope, of course, is that the movie turns out to be more Pirates of the Caribbean and less Haunted Mansion.

The newest reboot/follow-up/sequel to come out of Hollywood’s current everything-old-is-new-again trend is Mad Max: Fury Road. It has been thirty years since the character made famous by Mel Gibson has graced the silver screen and although Gibson is absent from the latest version, director George Miller is back in the driver’s seat. With Miller in place and Tom Hardy stepping in for Gibson, the Mad Max franchise is back in a big way.

Prior to the release of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers in 2012, there was some skepticism as to whether a comic book adventure featuring a team up of so many different superheroes could actually work. No one had ever really attempted such a project before and some of the biggest complaints about previous superhero films that failed were that they tried too hard to shoehorn multiple characters into one movie. Just think about Spider-Man 3. Whedon pulled it off, though, and The Avengers became a Hulk-sized smash. As a result, its sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, hasn’t faced much skepticism, but it has been challenged with some ridiculously high expectations.

Today, visitors are treated no better than a cash cow, milked of their dollars and good sense… breezing through a nondescript, cookie-cutter mall past the popcorn stand into the rectangular sloped seated room with a giant screen.